Best of Today (8/24)

Jenkins: Obama and the Smartphone Wars Updated Aug. 24, 2011 7:50 p.m. ET Patent litigation is a game created by government, and constructively so. But the game appears to be getting out of whack in the smartphone patent wars. Patents encourage innovation by protecting inventors to profit from innovation.

Riots database of 2.5m tweets reveals complex picture of interaction | UK news A shop is set on fire in Croydon, London. Anecdotal evidence suggests BlackBerry Messenger was also used by some rioters to disseminate messages inciting unrest. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP When David Cameron addressed an emergency session of parliament convened in the aftermath of four consecutive nights of rioting and looting across England, he quickly turned to the supposed role played by social media.

Even though the Windows Phone Mango operating system is still not in consumers' hands or phones, talk has turned to the next version of the OS, codenamed "Tango." I blogged earlier this month about what I was hearing from my sources about Tango. In short, my contacts said that Tango would be a minor release (or two) that would target lower-cost phones and be geared, in particular, to address the Asian market. Detangling the Windows Phone Tango talk

Aggregating Without Aggravating   What are the best practices when it comes to collecting the material of other news outlets? Wed. August 24, 2011 By Michaelle Bond Michaelle Bond (mbond@ajr.umd.edu) is an AJR editorial assistant. The day after media columnist Simon Dumenco wrote a post commenting on the Twitter buzz surrounding both Apple's iCloud announcement and the Rep.

Why Michael Robertson of Mp3Tunes deserves our gratitude — Tech News and Analysis (Build 20110814042011) To recap the decision in the Mp3Tunes case, EMI sued the company for what it said were a number of copyright-infringing features of the service — including that users could “sideload” songs to their online lockers, by transferring them directly from online sources such as Amazon, and that the service “de-duplicated” songs stored on its servers, so users who shared a specific song would simply access one copy instead of having to store two separate copies. As with many similar music-sharing lawsuits, EMI also argued that the simple act of copying a song to a cloud service was an infringement of copyright. Cloud-based lockers ruled legal

Reflections of an ex-Googler Reflections of an ex-Googler Google. It’s the number two most valuable brand in the world. One of the guys who invented the Internet works there. Their revenue hit $9 billion in Q2. Yet, there was something that nagged.

Why Apple Went To Dusseldorf

Samsung Galaxy handsets hit by EU ruling | The Digital Home Apple has won another major victory in its ongoing battle with Samsung. A Dutch court in The Hague today issued a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Ace smartphones, following a hearing on the matter earlier this month. The court said that the Android-based devices violate a software patent that iPhone maker Apple holds in the European Union and that Apple claims Samsung violated.

Technology Devices Either Sell Big or Die Fast

Google Pays $500 Million in Drug Ad Settlement WASHINGTON—In a rare public mea culpa, Google Inc. GOOG -1.91% Google Inc. Cl C U.S.: Nasdaq $530.60 -10.35 -1.91% April 11, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3.90M AFTER HOURS $533.00 +2.40 +0.45% April 11, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 17,079 P/E Ratio N/A Market Cap $329.34 Billion Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee $1,250,730 04/12/14 Hadoop There It Is: Big Data T... 04/11/14 Heartbleed Bug's 'Voluntary' O... 04/08/14 Turkey Slightly Loosens Grip o...